It is often said that organisation is the key to a successful wedding day. This is because good planning should ensure that stress is kept to a minimum. As an alternative to using a professional wedding planner in preparing for this momentous occasion, one option is to use Microsoft Project as your wedding planner. This means that you are essentially your own wedding planner but hopefully an extremely organised one.

In simple terms, Microsoft Project software is designed to help you schedule a project. You need to enter a list of all tasks that need to be completed. Each task is assigned a time schedule, constraints and other factors upon which completion of this task is dependant. Each task will have a start date and a finish date. The software also allows you to input necessary resources and how these relate to the completion of various tasks.

Fortunately, wedding planner templates are available for use with Microsoft Project. This saves you time because you do not need to input all of the information yourself, in terms of the task list. You can, however, still personalise it to match your plans for your own wedding day.

A task list can be designed so that it is essentially a countdown to your big day. As engagements seem to be getting shorter so the pressure to have everything organised in good time is increasing. Once you are engaged, you will want to start thinking about setting a date for the wedding and fixing a budget. Then you need to book venues, draw up guest lists and order invitations. Gift lists, flowers, photographers, wedding rings, attire and planning a honeymoon are just few other tasks on your list.

It can help to have a visual representation of what needs to be completed when. The Gantt chart wizard within Microsoft Office is a useful way of visualising all of this information. It can show you what needs to be done after your engagement, three months before your wedding, one month before, one week before and finally on the day itself. Best men and bridesmaids could well follow suit and use Microsoft Project to help plan speeches and stag or hen do's.

If you are familiar with Microsoft Project, it is just one of the tools that you can have at your disposal to help in the planning of your wedding day. If you feel that good organisation helps to lower your stress levels then Microsoft Project training can, it seems, benefit your personal life as well as your career.